MO GOP Chair Gets Involved In MS Race Over 'Racially Divisive Ads'

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) has been echoing calls from the chairman of the Missouri Republican Party for Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus to investigate robocalls in support of Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) re-election campaign, which the Missouri chairman called "racially divisive ads and robocalls."

.@Reince - I agree with @EdMartin4MO. Such divisive tactics belong to the left. There is no place in the @GOP for such behavior.

The tweets follow Missouri Republican Party Chairman Ed Martin sending letters to Priebus and other RNC members calling on Priebus to appoint a special task force to investigate the ads. Here's a sample of the letter Martin sent to other RNC members:

At this point, I am asking Reince to lead us - to appoint a committee of we RNC members to get to the bottom of the facts regarding the racially divisive ads and to report back to us for the August meeting. I have purposely left the membership of this committee up to Reince so that he can move quickly.

Those letters are based on ads reported by the Daily Mail that linked McDaniel to a supporter who had connections the Ku Klux Klan. The Daily Mail suggested that those ads were at least partially backed by former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), a major supporter and close ally of Cochran's. Barbour denied that groups supporting Cochran that he worked with ran those ads.

"We ran no radio ads that had anything to do with the KKK or race, or anything like that," Barbour told the Post.

The RNC did not respond to requests for comment from TPM. Martin was reached by TPM but did not respond to questions by press time.